Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (French: [øĘÉn vjÉlÉ lÉ dyk]; 27 January 1814 â 17 September 1879) was a French architect and author, famous for his restoration of the most prominent medieval landmarks in France. His major restoration projects included Notre-Dame de Paris, the Basilica of Saint Denis, Mont Saint-Michel, Sainte-Chapelle, the medieval walls of the city of Carcassonne, and Château de Roquetaillade in the Bordeaux region.
His writings on decoration and on the relationship between form and function in architecture had a fundamental influence on a whole new generation of architects, including all the major Art Nouveau artists: Antoni GaudĂ, Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, Henry van de Velde, Henri Sauvage and the Ăcole de Nancy, Paul Hankar, Otto Wagner, Eugène Grasset, Ămile GallĂŠ, and Hendrik Petrus Berlage. He also influenced the first modern architects, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Auguste Perret, Louis Sullivan, and Le Corbusier, who considered Viollet-le-Duc as the father of modern architecture. English architect William Burges claimed that "We all cribbed on Viollet-le-Duc even though no one could read French".